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Omen2 – Aggro for everybody

The new version of Omen is out, and by golly its good. Not only has it got new eye candy affects which make silly folks like me drool, but it also makes it easier to watch what type of aggro you like; aoe, one target, etc. I use a threat meter even while soloing on my Warlock, as any pet user should. And Omen allows you to walk the aggro line when doing DPS and maximise your damage without potentially dying.

Take a look at the WoW Insider post about it – nice screenshots and details. Then if you don’t already use it hang your head in shame until you do.

Update – 9 Oct 08 – WoW will soon have aggro built in, and I heard the guys at ProjectLore raving about it during a run on the Beta servers. After pulling aggro from a Tank who was not running any type of meter, and seeing the Mage die more than my Warlock for the same reason I hold firm on my opinion.

–> Omen (or some other visual tool) is Mandatory. Get it!

Btw – Priests (I love a good priest) must love and hate their temp aggro removal, but remember to remind those tanks that it goes away. Make macro to ensure your tank knows you’re in trouble. I’m a thick headed brute when tanking, and might need a nudge.

/yell Help Healbot is in trouble, and has to fade. Taunt it!

Or this macro example I found on Priestly Endeavors. It uses a nice combination of survival spells as you click through the macro, but is modified to use Fade if you’re grouped, or avoid using it if you’re not. This is great as the Priest can use the one macro to survive in both circumstances. I also like that the call for help is generic across all raids, groups, and yells – as its an inbuilt emote.

11 thoughts on “Omen2 – Aggro for everybody”

There are several versions of this floating around right now due to the updates and all party/raid members need to have the same version for it to work properly. Seems to have caused a lot of aggravation I would hold off downloading until it’s a little more stable.

I disagree. Getting the mod and talking about it will help everyone adopt it, or something like it. It might be haphazard now, but its certainly better than nothing – which is what we had before threatmeters were around.

I’ve tried using omen for a little while now and I think it’s the buggiest mod I’ve ever had the misfortune to use.
Psychonia is 100% correct. Omen doesn’t work at all unless everyone is using exactly the same version – not likely as everyone updates their mods at different times in different ways with all of the various sites holding different versions.

I’ve deleted it.

KTM is a much simpler and vastly more stable threat mod. I’m going back to what I know.

I might give it a another go in a month or so when they sort out all the bugs in it.

I ran ZA last night without a threatmeter and didn’t have any aggro issues, even with aggro ho’s like Starbaby and Taronar going all out.

A few days after a major change to the combat log is hardly a fair judge of a mod’s stability. Granted that its is buggy, but I expect that to resolve with time. Omen was as stable as KTM for a very long time before this.

KTM still requires your group to have it installed to get accurate threat, and last version I tested was useless at tracking individual mob threat values, especially when the mobs have the same name. So both mods require your group to have it running, which is reasonable – and why I said please install it. I will have to look at if having both running is an option.

Updating mods is easy if you use an Ace type updater, and considering that its an Ace mod – that should be simple.

Omen2 requires the use of the Threat2 library that comes with the mod. This means that you will get correct data regardless of the version of Omen2, as long as Threat2 is being used.

A disappointment for me was the removal of KTM support in the Threat2 library, which mean that Omen2 does not report to KTM.

Even with an automated updater, a mod that requires everyone to be using the same minor revison mod version is really no good to everyone especially when our raid group all went to grab the latest version at the same time and came back with at least 3 different versions.

So I stick to my original assertion that the mod is worth avoiding until a stable version is settled on.

I personally don’t think aggro meters are worth the overhead as most people install them but either must have the display toggled off or just simply ignore them.
That’s my experience as a tank anyway.

Can I move to your server? Half the pugs I get involved in, I’m the only one using any sort of threat meter at all. I was actually informed by a mage (who later got kicked from the group for various reasons, go figure) that Omen was a crutch, and good players didn’t need it. Oddly, one of the reasons he got kicked was because he kept pulling aggro off the tank…

LOL, perhaps the Mage was right – he just wasn’t in that category. My server is no different from any others I’m afraid, which is why the more folks who blog and comment about it the better. The community has to get the message eventually.